A year of living dangerously?

Should gappers make up their own adventure or pay to do organised volunteer work

While hovering over a basic latrine, wishing the cockroach at your feet would bugger off, having spent the afternoon digging a well and the morning teaching the alphabet to highly enthusiastic but undereducated six-year-olds, it's hard to imagine that your efforts can in fact be detrimental.

Yet this rather disheartening opinion seems to be becoming widespread. As more than 100,000 molly-coddled teenagers embark on a year out between school and university, the traditional gap experience is disappearing - while the voluntary work that is taking its place is under attack.

Not so long ago, if you told your parents and friends you were taking a gap year, expectations were of a trip around Europe on five dollars a day, or backpacking around Afghanistan without a mobile or e-mail. If you happened to meet someone delightful, or chanced a look round the local school and there was a job going, you might